


where black and white began

by blue--phantom (twilightscribe)



Series: my hollow heart has bled me dry [7]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Hunters, Angel Wings, Blood, Blood Loss, Fallen Angels, Immortality, Immortals, Introspection, M/M, Reaper76 Week, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-18
Packaged: 2018-09-18 06:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9372935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twilightscribe/pseuds/blue--phantom
Summary: In the aftermath of the explosion that took Gabe's wings, Jack worries and Gabe comes to a realization.





	

There’s a lot of blood. The bleeding still hasn’t stopped.

Jack doesn’t know if it’s worrying or a miracle that Gabe is still unconscious. There’s not really time for worrying until they’re safely in a nearby safe house; he sent Jesse for more bandages, but Jack has no idea where to begin.

Gabe’s wings are gone.

Torn away or burned in the explosion, Jack doesn’t precisely know.

What he _does_ know is that the bleeding hasn’t stopped. Where Gabe’s wings once joined his shoulders, there are now two jagged tears in the skin. There’s little nubs remaining, from where the wings joined his body, but nothing else remains of them.

Jack has to stop, to take several deep breaths, but they do nothing to steady his hands. They continue trembling as he threads the needle, presses the edges of the gashes together. He’s not certain that he can do this.

It’s different now. Gabe lost his wings because of _him_. Because he wanted to protect _him_.

He doesn’t know what that means for Gabe, how he’ll react to the loss.

It absolutely terrifies him.

His vision blurs, eyes burning. He has to blink back the tears. Sucking in a ragged breath, he hiccups on a sob.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Tightening his grip on the needle, Jack’s breathing is like a high whistle. He ignores it, focuses on the wound instead. It takes a long time – _too long_ , he thinks – for his hands to steady enough that he feels confident in beginning to stitch up the wounds. He knows from experience that they will leave scars; if Gabe hasn’t healed yet, then it’s bad.

He tries not to think about that.

Jack’s seen Gabe take a cannon blast to the torso before and he walked it off. It had been painful, he knows that, but he had healed in minutes. At the time, he’d thought that was the freakiest thing he had ever seen – and he can’t _die_ – to watch as Gabe’s internal organs repaired themselves, to watch as his body literally pulled itself back together again.

He’d been afraid then, trying to staunch the blood, but Gabe had swatted his hands away and told him that it would be fine.

He wishes, now, that Gabe would do the same. He wants – no, _needs_ – him to tell him that everything will be alright. Jack can’t remember being this terrified before; nothing compares. Not even waking up alone in the aftermath of a battle, surrounded by the bodies of his men and realizing _he should be dead_.

No, it’s not the same.

By the time he’s finished, his hands are covered in Gabe’s blood. It drips from the ends of his fingers, joining the puddles that have formed in the hollows of Gabe’s back. The sight of it churns his stomach, bile burns in the back of his throat, and he stumbles back.

What little was in his stomach, he vomits into a nearby bucket.

He should have been faster, quicker, stronger, Jack thinks, pressing his forehead against the wall. His stomach churns again, but there’s nothing left for him to bring up. He can’t stop thinking – _this is my fault_.

It’s his fault that Gabe’s lost his wings. His fault that his partner is lying there, bleeding out, on a table in a dingy little hide-out in the middle of New York. His fault for not being _more_.

If he hadn’t been captured, if he had just been _that much_ faster, this wouldn’t have happened.

It is all his fault.

 

Gabe realizes what happens when consciousness starts to return to him.

There’s a gaping emptiness at his back where weight should be. His shoulders feel like they’re on fire.

He blinks his eyes, waits for the room to come into focus. It takes time; too long, Gabe thinks, and he wonders just how long he’s been out for.

When he moves to push himself up, all his joints creak – like he’s suddenly aged a hundred years. He winces at the unfamiliar stiffness, the burning that now suffuses his entire being. Carefully, he reaches a hand around, behind his back, groping for the base of his wings.

He finds nothing.

Actually, that’s not completely true. His fingers come into contact with tacky, drying blood. Then the rough lines of stitches stretched across nubs. Of his wings, there’s no sign.

He has Fallen.

Gabe sits there, hand awkwardly pressed against the nub that’s all that’s left of his wings.

He fell.

The last of his kind and he is no longer one of them. He had made his brothers a promise and now it’s broken.

 _For a human_.

He remembers, now, throwing himself on top of Jack, wings wrapping around the both of them to protect them as everything collapsed and caught fire around them. Remembers Jack’s terror and how watery those blue eyes of his had been. The way that he’d screamed Gabe’s name.

That was the last thing he remembered. Jack screaming his name.

Looking around the room, he realizes that they’re in one of the tiny, derelict Overwatch safe houses that Gabe helped to established with Jack so many decades ago. Over in one corner, he spots the kid cuddled up with his worn, brightly coloured serape wrapped around him as a blanket. He’s fast asleep.

_Where’s Jack?_

His senses go on high alert. They’re dulled now, Gabe realizes, from the loss of his wings – from his Fall. He is an angel no longer.

But then, he sees it, the bloody blond hair by the table. Jack’s leaned back, face scrunched up, but asleep.

He’s alive and whole. Though stained with blood.

Not his, though, because none of it’s fresh. Jack’s clothes and hands, resting lightly in his lap, are all stained with the dull brown of dried blood. He must have run his hands through his hair in worry – a tick of his that Gabe knows well – so many times, as it sticks up in every which direction and is liberally streaked through with more blood.

The pain fades, slightly, and he relaxes.

He fell a long time ago, Gabe realizes, sliding off the table to sit beside Jack. His willingness to save Jack despite everything, that _need_ that had burned inside of him to _protect_ …

Yes, he fell a long time ago.

**Author's Note:**

>  **Prompt:** “At Your Back” - Trust/Betrayal  
>  **Words:** 1069 words
> 
> I wasn't as evil this time to make you all wait, so here's the direct follow-up to the previous part. Hope you like it!


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